Inside

“Hunting power is a very strange affair. There is no way to plan it ahead of time. That’s what’s exciting about it. A warrior proceeds as if he had a plan though, because he trusts his personal power. He knows for a fact that it will make him act in th emost appropriate fashion.”

The Wild Edge of Sorrow

Published: December 21, 2015

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Some months ago Charles Eisenstein published this conversation with Francis Weller and I got around to listening to it a couple of days ago. I resonated deeply with some of the things Francis said. It was also, of the podcasts Charles has done that I have heard, the most vibrant and clear conversation as it touched and moves Charles too.

Francis talks about grief and sorrow as doorways into a rich experience of being. He talks about different kinds of grief: personal loss – intimate attachments that are withdrawn from our life (family, friends, etc.); ecological loss – dealing with the dark ecological outlook that is in the ar; ancestral loss – that are culturally inherited (in my case I would probably give the Holocaust as an example); loss that comes from a gap between the world we feel was promised us (a world of rich social life) and the world we live in. He talks about loss and grief being an integral part of life and that rituals to experience and express grief and loss need to be a regular part of life that is best served in a communal setting.

This is a subject near to me. I feel there are more aspects of grief – the death of ideas being a prominent one in my life – it is a subtle form of loss that can go unnoticed. Kind of like the difference between soldiers who have suffered amputated limbs (a clear artifact of war) and soldiers who suffer PTSD which has no visible markings but manifests in so many subtle ways in day-to-day life.

I have not yet experienced a kind of social-supported form of grief having lived much of my life either on my own or in very intimate settings … and I do wonder abotu the effect that has had on me. I do feel in touch with experiences and emotions of touch and grief …. I wonder how much they have informed and shaped me … and how Francis’ ideas would meet me in my life.